The Retinal Circus is a live album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend. It was released on September 30, 2013, in Europe,[2] and on October 29, 2013, in North America.[3] The audio and video material were recorded at Roundhouse, London, on October 27, 2012, when Townsend performed a special one-night-only concert celebrating and covering his 20-year musical career.[4]
In November 2011, after performing a series of special Devin Townsend Project shows, Devin Townsend revealed his plan to perform a one-off concert in London, England, that would cover his musical career from mid-1990s up to that point.[4] Townsend stated that he wanted to create a "more than musical" show which included a storyline, multiple performers and special effects.[4] Later he said that the concert would be recorded for future release.[5]
The concert lasted approximately two and a half hours, and it was divided into two parts, with an intermission in between.[6] The band consisted of the same personnel as the recent years' Devin Townsend Project line-up, and the special guests were Anneke van Giersbergen and Jed Simon, with Steve Vai hosting the show via pre-recorded video projected onto screens. The setlist was focused heavily on material from Epicloud and a few other albums from Townsend's catalogue; the setlist included no songs from Terria, Accelerated Evolution, Ki and Ghost. Townsend also performed, against his then-current principles,[7] two Strapping Young Lad songs. He later stated that this was because of the career-spanning nature of the concert, and playing those two songs was a "closure for him and Strapping Young Lad".[8] He also wanted to "respect the legacy of the band" and to reconnect and perform again with Jed Simon.[9]
The concert was one of the most prepared Devin Townsend shows ever, with over a year of pre-production, and it was recorded in high definition with a higher budget and a more professional approach to production than the previous live release, By a Thread.[4] 5000 people saw the sold out performance, and the concert was also streamed live through Livemusicstage.com.[10]
The Retinal Circus was released as six different versions. The standard editions feature either a double-CD, double-DVD or a Blu-ray. The Blu-ray version includes the whole concert on a single disc. The digipak edition features both the CDs and the DVDs. Two limited edition box sets were also released: a "clown box" featuring all five discs of the standard editions, limited to 5000 copies worldwide, and a "monkey box" featuring all five discs with a 40-page book, signed lithography print and fan merchandise, housed in a vinyl sized box with a pop-up of the Retinal Circus stage. The "monkey box" edition is limited to 2500 hand-numbered copies worldwide.[11][12] The album was a chart success in some countries, with the double-DVD version peaking at No. 1 in Finland.[13]
All track lengths taken from the CD release.
All tracks are written by Devin Townsend